AMID THE ANTI-GOVERNMENT and anti-FIFA protests that have dogged the current World Cup, it is worth asking what the globe’s biggest football tournament actually brings to a country and what it leaves behind.
Irish documentary maker Evan McAuliffe travelled to South Africa, hosts of the 2010 World Cup, several months after its staging. Large parts of the documentary were filmed during the World Cup and look at the true effect of the event on local people and communities.
McAuliffe then returned to the land where ‘Bafana Bafana’ [the national football team] are revered. His intent was to discover for himself, and the documentary viewer, if the tournament fulfilled all of its promises, what impact it made on the South African public and how a country moves on when the glare of media attention boards a plane and jets off to the next big story.
‘The Football Effect’ airs on Setanta Ireland [freeview] this evening from 9:30pm. You can check out an extensive trailer of the documentary here:
